


this is the first day of my life

by storytellingape



Category: BlacKkKlansman (2018), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, The Kitchen (2019)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Family, Kylux Adjacent Ship, M/M, Minor Violence, Slice of Life, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:07:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26931106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storytellingape/pseuds/storytellingape
Summary: Gabriel O’Malley lived a simple life.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Clyde Logan/Stensland (Crash Pad), Gabriel O'Malley/Flip Zimmerman
Comments: 20
Kudos: 365





	this is the first day of my life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jeusus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeusus/gifts).



> Title taken from Bright Eyes' "First Day of My Life". Thank you to [StaticRaining](https://twitter.com/StaticRaining) for making my fics including this one readable and sorry for subjecting you to them. This fic would not have been completed without your support and encouragement! Jeu, I'm sorry this took so long but it was a pleasure to write this for you! Hope you enjoy (and spot some of the references)!
> 
> **This fic is self-indulgent, doesn't follow a particular "time period" and is a mesh of Zimmermalley headcanons on Twitter. It's not that deep lol. You have been warned.**

Gabriel stole his first car at eighteen. His pride and joy, a sleek black 1961 muscle car with buttery smooth leather seats he bought second-hand at twenty, after his first armed robbery. 

He liked taking the backroads and driving from city to city, rolling through neighbourhoods ridden with garbage and graffiti, where there was always a job waiting for him, always someone wanting their enemy’s head on a platter. For years this was how he lived his life: always on the move, sweeping across the map like a pioneer looking for promised homestead. He was good at what he did. People liked how he worked; he was clean, efficient, he knew how to hide a body. He had a portfolio and it was an impressive one. 

Then Gabriel turned twenty-nine and everything went south. Choices were made and he fucked up. He took his car and his gun and buried his money where only he could find it, someday when the need struck. Then he drove east without looking back. 

* * *

Gabriel meets then-Officer Phillip Zimmerman in the spring of 1979. 

He’s twenty-seven years old and in town for a job, scoping out the neighbourhood and getting a general feel of the place. He does this from time to time, pretends he’s normal just like everybody else. Just a guy passing through, uninteresting enough to disappear into the crowd. He eats where all the locals like to eat and rents a room in a motel on the outskirts of the city. 

Colorado Springs is a hotbed of crazy, full of flag-burning kooks with shifty eyes and more guns in their basement than should be legal.

Gabriel invites Flip to his motel on the third night, because sex in the back of a pickup truck is only comfortable two times out of three. He’s careful to keep his belongings out of the way—his gun, the payment for the job rolled up in a wad and stuffed in a sock in the closet, his medication (because heats are a pain to suffer through when you’re working a job).

Flip doesn’t snoop, but he seems strangely fascinated by the fact that Gabriel left a shirt to dry in the shower. Gabriel catches him staring at it while he’s in there washing his hands, and when Gabriel raises his eyebrows at him, Flip just shrugs,looking sheepish, and tells him he’ll be ready in five minutes. 

Gabriel waits for him on the bed, his shoes already off and his belt undone, his body thrumming with the leftover adrenaline of a job well done. He rubs his elbows like a junkie, shivering from the near arctic temperature of the room, always cold when he’s near his heat. When Flip finally makes his way to the bed, Flip kneels on the very edge of the mattress but otherwise doesn’t touch Gabriel.

He’s staring again. This time he’s looking at Gabriel’s feet. There’s a hole in Gabriel’s left sock that Gabriel has been meaning to do something about. Gabriel knows his way around needle and thread. which may come as a surprise to most people but he’s always been a tinkerer. His mam taught him more than just prayers and temperance and turning your head away from the things that you want.

Gabriel returns Flip’s stare with amusement, stretching his body across the pillows and arranging himself in a pose. “What is it?” he asks, on the verge of exasperation though his words come out sultry and heavy with desire. He hasn’t expected sex with Flip to be this big song and dance. Now they’re waiting in the wings during the intermission with the curtains down and the audience expectant and waiting. 

“I’ve never seen you with your shoes off,” Flip says, before he shakes himself out of it and pushes the hair back from his face. It’s a handsome face, despite the exhaustion rimming his eyes and the heavy bags.

“You want me to take my socks off or something?” Gabriel asks, wanting just to get the ball rolling. He’s aching to be fucked and there’s just too many layers of clothing between them. 

“No, no.” There’s a hint of amusement in Flip’s voice. “Keep them on. I like it. It’s sexy.”

“You think socks are sexy?” Gabriel asks, trying and failing not to sound incredulous.

“I think you are,” Flip says, then flicks his gaze up to meet Gabriel’s. “In general.”

“You think I’m sexy,” Gabriel repeats. “ _In general._ ” He snorts— just the once. That’s such a stupid thing to get an erection from but the human body can be such a mystery. 

Few things really get Gabriel’s engine going and most of them have to do with size. He appreciates strength in a man, also big equipment. Flip’s unabashed honesty is something else.

Gabriel pulls Flip on top of him, fingers wrinkling the fabric of his shirt. He wraps his legs around Flip’s waist to keep him in place, right there where he needs the most friction. Then there are hands everywhere, where Gabriel appreciates them on his body: squeezing his arse, stroking his hip. Then Flip cups his face and breathes down his lips and Gabriel does them both a favour and sticks a tongue down Flip’s throat. 

When they’re both naked, save for socks, Flip rolls Gabriel onto his back and spreads Gabriel’s knees open. 

“Really?” Gabriel asks, scooting up with a frown. “You want to fuck me like this?”

“What do you mean? You want to ride me instead or something?”

“Well, I don’t want to blow out my back or anything but fuck. Missionary, really?”

Flip seems a bit annoyed, though his dick doesn’t appear to want to back down which is always a good sign. “There’s nothing wrong with missionary.”

“You’re a good boy, aren’t you?” Gabriel purrs because sometimes he can’t help being an asshole. “A good Jewish boy. That’s so sweet.”

Gabriel cups Flip’s cheek to appease him, reining in his laughter. The last thing he wants is to piss Flip off after he’s done all the work: prepping and priming Gabriel with his attentive mouth and tongue, which is more than what Gabriel can say for most of his bedfellows. 

Flip growls, swatting Gabriel’s hand from his face. “I’ll show you good.”

It’s cute but Gabriel’s not laughing when Flip makes good on his promise. Flip may be a good boy but he fucks like the kind of dirty bastard who cheats at cards and drinks you under the table and then asks to see what colour knickers you’ve got on, while the two of you are knelt on church pews in the middle of Sunday Mass. Altogether surprising but not unwelcome; it’s always the quiet ones. 

Gabriel is sweet as a doe in the aftermath, pleasantly sticky with his own sweat and come. He’s never been fucked that hard before. There will be bruises in the morning, but he’s used to taking pain anyway- It’s the way he was built, and he has both his upbringing and the military to thank for that.

Flip looks over at him in contemplative silence, stubbing out his cigarette on a beer can on the nightstand. His face is unreadable in the weak light of the motel room. Gabriel is too fucked out to kick him out, even though Flip has already overstayed his welcome. Gabriel’s arse is sore and leaking come and he’s drifting off to sleep and it’s hard to focus on anything else but the pneumatic hiss of the clunky AC unit.. 

Flip slips an arm around Gabriel’s waist and presses their bodies together. Gabriel can feel the scratch of his stubble on his shoulder and it makes goosebumps rise on his skin.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Gabriel mutters, trying and failing to shrug him off, but Flip is several weight classes above him and can’t take a hint. Gabriel falls asleep trying anyway.

* * *

Gabriel finds out he’s pregnant on an August afternoon. He’s in Nashville, squatting over the dead body of a mark, stowing any personal belongings that might identify him in a plastic bag to dispose of later. The air is thick with the tail-end heat of summer, flies quick to swarm the bloated corpse on the concrete. The mark had been long in dying which was always a pain. Gabriel watched him bleed out in the alley and then, when he was sure that Roger Devlin was as dead as a doornail, got to work. 

He has a method: always hide the evidence. It’s why he’s never been caught, why people come to him in droves when they want a quick, quiet kill.

It’s a job like any other but as he roots through Roger Devlin’s pockets, something about the sight of his unblinking eyes makes Gabriel’s stomach roil with sudden unease. He throws up behind some garbage bins, his eyes watering from the smell of garbage, rot, exhaust. But it’s just a minor hiccup and then he’s back on the road in no time. He calls his client from a payphone to inform him that Devlin has been taken care of and to wire the rest of the money into his bank account, just one of the four that he uses because he’s a paranoid bastard who enjoys anonymity and freewheeling selfhood. 

At a drive-thru, he orders a large milkshake and some fries but he throws it all up on the highway later, heaving in the tall grass next to his car, his legs shaking with exhaustion.

Looks like it’s time to pay an old friend a visit. 

* * *

Faraday runs a clinic that’s as bland and nondescript as he is. Gabriel found him by chance. He was looking for another private clinic in the area but was pointed to the general direction of Faraday’s practice. He wandered, then wandered some more. There, next to a Chinese general store and laundromat, was Faraday’s clinic.

The walls were once a brilliant white, Gabriel can tell, but just like everything in this part of town, they’ve succumbed to age and poor upkeep. Whenever Gabriel comes to visit, there’s hardly ever anybody in the waiting room, except sometimes for a young man patiently reading by the potted plant. 

Faraday is a family doctor, with an accent that makes most women swoon like schoolgirls. Gabriel thought Faraday was unnerving at first—something about the watery, unblinking eyes—when he’d first come to him asking about a suspicious rash on his thigh which embarrassingly turned out to be just beard burn. When Gabriel and Faraday got to talking, they found out they had more in common than the colour of their hair. What set them apart was their choice of facial hair: Faraday had a perfectly groomed mustache that he kept neat with a pair of tweezers.

“I’m not an obstetrician, Mr. O’Malley,” Faraday says when Gabriel relays his symptoms, lying on the examination table even after Faraday told him it was unnecessary. “But I think you might be pregnant.”

That’s what Gabriel has suspected all along. He knows his body better than anybody else. He hasn’t been taking his birth control in the two months he’s shacked up with Flip. He’s been careless, lazy. 

Seven times out of ten, he doesn’t let Flip use a condom because he knows for a fact Flip doesn’t fool around with other people when Gabriel isn’t in town. The sex is so terrific, Gabriel often forgets to tell Flip to pull out. Not that he’d want Flip to pull out, because that would completely ruin the experience of Gabriel getting creamed within an inch of his life, but maybe he should have, then this could have been avoided.

Gabriel has made bad decisions before, but this is probably the worst he’s ever made, worse even than the time he wore neon pink shorts to a roller derby, but maybe not as bad as drunkenly confessing all of his criminal offences to Flip.

“Here,” Faraday says, handing him a pregnancy kit. “It’s fairly easy to use. You just urinate on the—”

“Yeah, yeah!” Gabriel says, talking over him, because the situation is getting too real for his own comfort. “I’m not a kid. I know how a pregnancy test works.”

Faraday gives him a look that questions that but he lets Gabriel use the washroom so he can be sure.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Gabriel breathes when those two pink lines appear, clear as day. He’s never resented lines this much in his life before, or the colour pink. “Fuck me.”

* * *

Because Gabriel is a masochist first and foremost and because he may have hidden a sockful of cash in Flip’s backyard, he pays Flip a visit when he’s two months along. His belly looks distended, like maybe he spent too much time at the buffet table, but otherwise he looks fine and not pregnant at all. He can fit into most of his jeans with minimal discomfort. 

The baby is Flip’s. Of course it is. If it were anyone else’s, Gabriel wouldn’t even be thinking about carrying it to term—another bad decision. But like killing people for a living and carrying six different driver’s licenses, it’s just something you learn to live with. 

They fuck on Flip’s sofa because Gabriel is an animal with no self-control and no sense of shame. When Flip puts him to bed later, sleepy and complacent after hours and hours of back-breaking sex, he starts sniffing at Gabriel’s neck for no reason and then touches his hip. “You smell different,” he says, voice low and cautious.

Gabriel blinks an eye open and shoots him a squinty look over his shoulder. “Are you telling me I need a shower?”

Flip squeezes his hip. “No. What? It’s just that I know what you smell like and you don’t usually smell like this.”

Gabriel says nothing. He should tell Flip- But then again, what good would it do? Flip has already made him want things that he ordinarily wouldn’t even think about, like parking his car next to Flip’s in the driveway and getting a matching pyjama set. 

Some people are the white-picket fence type while others, like Gabriel, prefer to cut and run. He’s not built for commitment; he’s not ready for family. He can’t put Flip’s life at risk, nor his unborn child’s, and he has too many enemies to really be able to settle down. Maybe in a different life, maybe if he hadn’t left home at seventeen and robbed his first bank. Maybe if he had actually gone to college and became an accountant and was a law abiding citizen who didn’t know how to cut up a body in twenty different ways.

Flip rubs Gabriel’s stomach out of habit, and Gabriel hisses, startled.

“You all right?” Flip asks.

“Yeah,” Gabriel laughs, biting his tongue on the lie. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

* * *

Gabriel drives himself to the hospital two weeks before he’s due. After five intense hours of labour, he gives birth to Stensland. He almost names him Cormac after his great uncle but after trying and failing to spell it for the nurse in a drug-induced stupor, he settles for Stensland. It’s simple; he saw it on a brochure at one of the motels he and Flip used to fuck in. Oddly fitting.

Stensland is healthy and beautiful, and his hair is a soft pale red, which makes Gabriel feel all too smug about his child looking like him and nothing like his other father. Stensland cries when Gabriel touches his cheek with a finger, and cries when Gabriel presses a kiss to his forehead. He cries when the nurse takes him away to clean, loud and wailing. Gabriel can hear him from down the hall. Gabriel loves him already, even with all the crying, and his arms ache with the emptiness of being parted from him. 

Three days later, he’s allowed to take Stensland home. Gabriel puts Stensland in a baby carrier in the passenger seat. He eats a big juicy burger in the parking lot of a Strip Mall, getting meat juice all over his face as he watches Stensland sleep. He rips the hospital bracelet from his wrist and shoves it in the glove compartment, then turns to Stensland again to give his soft little head a kiss. 

“So, what am I gonna do with you, huh?” he asks quietly. “What am I gonna do with you?”

Stensland doesn’t answer. He can’t. He’s a fucking baby. Gabriel sighs and kisses his head again, feeling like an idiot, then he drives out of the parking lot in search of a motel. 

* * *

When Stensland is three months old, Gabriel leaves him on Flip’s doorstep. It’s the hardest decision Gabriel has ever made but he’s not the kind of man who will make a good father. He knows this about himself. His life simply has no room for a small child. He tucks Stensland’s favourite toy and a thick envelope of money into his carrier and then proceeds to hide in the bushes, waiting for Flip to answer the door. 

It doesn’t take too long; Gabriel knows Flip is home because he has Flip’s schedule memorised. He’s a man who likes his routine, who takes comfort in the mundane. 

Flip looks around suspiciously, finds Stensland on the doorstep and the note Gabriel has hidden away in his pillow. His expression morphs as he reads the note: confusion, anger, then visible disappointment, but he takes Stensland inside and Gabriel is finally able to breathe again.

Six months later, Gabriel breaks into Flip’s house. He wouldn’t call it breaking and entering because he knows where Flip keeps the spare key, but sometimes when Gabriel lets himself in like this, Flip gets so hung up about it and pissy. He doesn’t do it a lot, but when he does, he makes sure not to be obtrusive about it. He doesn’t steal anything. Sometimes he does a bit of cleaning. 

The sink is overrun with dirty dishes and there are baby things all over the sofa: toys, a blanket, a feeding bottle that’s half full. On the mantel is a picture of Stensland smiling with his gums out. Next to it sits his favourite toy, the same one Gabriel left him with more than a year ago. 

Upstairs Gabriel is surprised to find that the spare room has been repurposed. He steps inside, feeling like an intruder because everything is lovely and so perfectly arranged it breaks his heart. The walls are freshly painted, a mint green, the floor refinished and stained walnut. There’s a small chest of drawers, a little bookshelf filled with storybooks and on the far wall there’s a nautical-themed mobile hanging over a crib. 

Gabriel sits down on the stuffed armchair next to the window, soft with the indentations of Flip’s body. He can picture Flip in this chair, putting Stensland to sleep, feeding him, rocking him in his arms. Gabriel has had his fair share of sleepless nights. His chest hurt from breastfeeding the first few months and there was a time when Stensland just wouldn’t stop crying, no matter what Gabriel did. He kept getting kicked out of motel after motel due to noise complaints, butone day he put the radio on to Bruce Springsteen and Stensland suddenly stopped crying. The kid’s got some taste. 

Flip finds him asleep hours later when he returns with Stensland strapped to his front in a papoose. Stensland doesn’t recognise Gabriel and turns away when Gabriel tries to kiss his cheek. Flip turns away too but for entirely different reasons: either because of Gabriel’s split lip or because of the stench of three whole days on the road that’s hanging over him like a shroud.

“What are you doing here?” Flip asks.

“You’re not gonna ask about the wrist?” Gabriel holds it up to eye-level. He banged it up pretty bad when he was wrestling a man for his gun. He’s been in rough shape ever since he’s had Stensland or maybe it’s just old age slowly catching up to him. He used to be faster, before the pregnancy. More limber. Better. 

Flip’s frown deepens. “You in trouble again?”

Gabriel grins, waggling his eyebrows. “When am I not?”

Flip doesn’t answer. He puts Stensland in his crib. Stensland watches them quietly through the bars, attempting to stand on wobbly feet. He’s gotten so big. His hair is longer now, fine and downy and red. 

“I just need to lay low for a while,” Gabriel tells Flip. Half of it is true. The other half is that he’s tired and sick of hiding. There are enemies on the doorstep; he can’t deflect them on his own. 

“I haven’t seen you in a year, Gabriel,” Flip says, looking at him with unreadably dark eyes. There’s nothing in them, not even sympathy, but maybe Flip has simply learned to guard his emotions after Gabriel spent so much time wreaking havoc on them. “What do you want me to say? You think I’d welcome you with open arms after you dumped a baby on me? You left your son on my fucking doorstep, O’Malley. Is Stensland mine?”

“Look, it’s just for a couple of days,” Gabriel says. He has a crick in his neck from sleeping on it wrong. Stensland is still watching them from his crib. “I know I owe you an explanation.”

Flip makes a sound halfway between amusement and disdain. “You think?”

“I get it, all right? I’m the arsehole here. You think it was easy for me to dump the baby on your doorstep? You think I like feeling like a failure? I’m a criminal, Flip. I can’t keep a child, and if it makes you sleep better at night then you can pretend that Stensland is yours.”

“Well, is he or isn’t he? Which is it?”

At the rate they’re going, it’s a wonder Stensland hasn’t started to fuss. He startles at the loud noises but behaves otherwise, peeking through the bars of his crib with wide green eyes. Gabriel’s eyes. Gabriel worried at first that there wasn’t enough resemblance to Flip, that Flip would think Stensland was somebody else’s and therefore not his responsibility to bear. Flip may have the patience of a saint but he’s just a man too: he has his limits. Flip is like the tundra, serene but containing a stark dangerous stillness. Gabriel is the arctic wind that stirs him into action. He pushes and prods and needles Flip endlessly, winding him up so he shows his true colours. Like any military man, Flip has some darkness to him too, though he covers it remarkably well by assimilating into civilian life. 

“Does it bloody make a difference whose he is?” Gabriel laughs, sharp and cold. “What are you gonna do if he isn’t yours, Flip? Put him up for fucking adoption?”

“What?” Flip has the gall to look offended even though he started the argument in the first place. “No, what the hell are you talking about? Why would I put him up for adoption? Fuck, I’m not cruel, Gabriel. He was mine the second you left him on my doorstep.”

“Well if you’re not cruel then it probably wouldn’t kill you to let me bunk here for a few days. I have nowhere else to go. I know you don’t want me here, but you’re the only one I could think of who doesn’t want me dead.” 

It’s true. Gabriel doesn’t have many friends left. He never had a lot to begin with, because he was suspicious of everyone and had poor boundaries. His notion of friendship is fuzzy at best: most of his friends who aren’t dead or in hiding, he’s either tried to sleep with or sold out to the Feds. There’s little honour among thieves; a man’s got to watch out for himself. 

“Come on,” Gabriel says, touching Flip’s arm, then dropping his hand when Flip says nothing. “Phillip, please. For old time’s sake.”

It’s the name that does it. Gabriel is sure of it. Flip has a love/hate relationship with the use of his full name. It was Gabriel’s pet name for him whenever he was in a good mood. He used to call him Officer, then Detective , but those were reserved for playtime in the bedroom, before Flip lost most of his good humour and before Gabriel skipped town.

“Two days,” Flip says under his breath, shoving a finger in his face. “And then you’re outta here.”

* * *

Gabriel sleeps on the couch. He’s never slept on the couch before. The first time Flip brought him home to his place, he took Gabriel to bed straight away after wining and dining him.Those were better days for sure. Now that Gabriel has lost the privilege of warming his bed, he has lost the privilege of central heating too. 

It’s colder than a witch’s tit in the living room and Gabriel is shivering like a pneumonic under the thin blanket. He wonders if Flip even realises how much he’s making Gabriel suffer. Gabriel, the father of his child, who brought Stensland into the world after a lot of blood and screaming. Gabriel who looks so much like the apple of his eye, from head to tiny toe.

Gabriel gets up from the couch and makes himself a coffee in the kitchen; he can’t sleep like this. Upstairs in his bed, Flip is splayed out on his back like a starfish, mouth half open and snoring. Clutched loosely in his right hand is a pink plastic baby monitor. Flip’s room hasn’t changed much, since Gabriel has last seen it: there are baby things on the nightstand, a bottle of formula and a rattle, but no indication that Flip has been sharing his bed with someone else in Gabriel’s absence.

Gabriel sips his coffee and goes to check on Stensland. The baby is asleep, but then Gabriel steps on a creaky floorboard and Stensland stirs, a soft wriggle of movement before he opens his eyes in the dark. Gabriel almost drops his coffee in shock. 

“Jesus,” he hisses quietly, clutching the wall for support. And now Stensland’s making these noises, looking at him curiously and wrinkling his little face. He hasn’t started crying yet which is a good sign.

“Hey there, little buddy.”

Gabriel squats next to the crib, peering at Stensland through the slits. Stensland tilts his head up a little, meeting his gaze unflinchingly, and Gabriel examines the delicate wings of his ears, the red curls that are thicker around the nape of his neck, the soft folds under his chin. His fingers are soft with baby fat, the fingernails pearlescent ovals, tiny and fascinating. Flip has dressed him up in strawberry overalls, which is frankly ridiculous but also a little cute. 

Gabriel picks Stensland up when he starts fussing, awkwardly holding him in his arms like a heavy loaf of bread. Stensland’s grown since Gabriel last had him in his arms, when he would blindly reach for Gabriel’s cracked and sore chest and take comfort in his smell. Now Stensland won’t stop making noises of distress, the volume of his cries escalating the more Gabriel tries to shush him. 

And of course Flip shows up at the door before Gabriel’s own distress morphs into a full blown panic. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Gabriel turns to him, immediately defensive, stopping in the act of rocking Stensland back to sleep. Or at least, there have been attempts to rock him back to sleep. None of them seem to be working at the moment. 

If there’s a bite in his voice that’s because he doesn’t appreciate the way Flip is looking at him: unwelcoming and disbelieving. “I’m trying to put my child back to sleep Flip, what does it look like?”

Stensland fusses, kicking his little feet.

“Keep your voice down, Jesus, you’re upsetting him.” Flip takes Stensland with a lot more tenderness than Gabriel ever thought him capable of and almost immediately Stensland starts to quiet down. 

Gabriel watches Flip put Stensland back to sleep. He makes it look so easy.

Gabriel knows it’s stupid but he seems unable to get past it. He feels weirdly jealous. Jealous of Flip, who’s gently rocking the baby and looking at Stensland with such a soft look on his face and moving with such confidence and ease it’s like he’s been doing this his whole life. Flip was supposed to be the one who didn’t know what to do, and here he’s figured everything out in Gabriel’s absence. Gabriel will never catch up now.

Flip turns to him, expression visibly skeptical even in the murky darkness of the room. “What were you doing up here?”

“What do you think?” Gabriel says, unable to keep the bite out of his voice, because he’s cold and he’s got a crick in his neck and his own child doesn’t even recognise him and it’s all his goddamn fault. Flip has every right to look at him with contempt because Gabriel saddled him with a responsibility he couldn’t have anticipated. As far as Flip is concerned, Stensland just happens to be Gabriel’s kid. Flip has no real parental claim on him, but maybe if he pulled his head out of his arse for one goddamn minute, he’d realise Stensland was his all along. 

“I’m not going to take him from you, Flip.” Gabriel wraps his robe tighter around himself, tucking his clenched fists in his elbows. “I just went to check up on him. I can do that, can’t I? He’s mine you know.”

“He’s mine too,” Flip says.

Gabriel looks at him, then, in surprise. Two years and Flip still finds ways to pull the rug from under his feet. “Well, maybe he is,” he says vaguely. “Maybe he isn’t. I wanted to see him. I don’t want any trouble. I wanted to see if he still remembers me.”

“Well, does he?” Flip asks. “Remember you?”

Gabriel snorts. “No, but I kind of expected that.”

“I mean, you abandoned him, Gabe.”

“I wouldn’t have left him here with you if I’ve had a choice,” Gabriel’s voice cuts through the stillness before dropping abruptly to a whisper when Stensland starts to stir. “I didn’t trust anyone else to care for him. But I trust you.”

* * *

Detective work may pay peanuts but apparently Flip is still somehow able to hire a nanny to look after Stensland. The nanny’s name is Margaret and she’s a curious thing with big brown eyes and the sharpest French accent Gabriel has ever heard. Apparently she’s from Quebec, here on a student exchange program. Gabriel flips through her wallet while Flip doles out instructions, telling her to check on Stensland every other hour and to make sure his nappy is changed at least three times within the day (four if he goes number two), and everything seems to check out. 

According to her Student ID and expired driver’s license, Margaret is 21 and studying architecture at the local community college. Flip says he vouches for her but Gabriel has a hard time trusting people off the bat, especially when they have French accents and wear colourfully bright bandanas indoors. It’s an instinct honed by years of experience in his line of work; you pick up on the little things. But just like predicting the weather and hoping your one night stand doesn’t knock you up, Gabriel’s accuracy can get a little wobbly.

It didn’t take Gabriel very long to trust Flip, for example, but he chalks it up to his general weakness for big brown eyes and Flip’s almost preternatural ability to lock in on Gabriel’s prostate when they’re fucking. 

Gabriel manages to accost Flip just as he’s lumbering down the hall with his car keys dangling from jangling i one hand. They haven’t spoken since breakfast after Flip quietly drank his coffee and pretended Gabriel wasn’t in the room.

“You don’t trust me with Stensland?” Gabriel asks, because he has to say it. “Is that why you brought a babysitter in?”

Flip grabs his jacket where it’s hanging from a stand behind the door and then takes his sweet time buttoning it up before responding. “She’s real good with Stensland.” He shrugs. “She’s a good kid, too.” 

“Right,” Gabriel says, feeling stupid now in the face of Flip’s sincerity. It’s clear Flip’s already got some sort of system in place. Flip can’t be home all the time to look after an infant and Stensland is too young to be foisted off onto his bubbe, whom Gabriel has only met once when he was digging up dirt on Flip back in the early days of their relationship. Nothing has ever come out of it except an ancient recipe for funnel cake. Flip has no dirty secrets, other than a stint as a trombone player in his high school band. And now he has another: a child whose origins would have set tongues wagging. 

Flip promises to be back at five but Gabriel knows his working hours and doesn’t bet on it. Gabriel makes himself coffee in the kitchen meanwhile, familiar enough with the layout of Flip’s house that he can walk blindly through it in the dark, especially when he’s sneaking in through the back door. He’s lived with Flip before, in short stretches whenever he needed to lay low. Gabriel knows every nook and cranny and there’s nothing Flip can hide from him. 

Not his savings, which he keeps in various coffee cans under the sink because Flip doesn’t believe in banks and he likes to pay for everything in cash. Not his cupboards, which are full to bursting with boxes of cereal—and not even the off-brand kind which is the only kind he should be able to afford with with the money he makes as detective, but the good stuff, practically gourmet. Clearly, the man has a problem if he’s spending precious coin on processed sugar. Flip keeps his best china tucked away in a box marked “breakables”. In the attic where all his crockery and family heirlooms live and where Gabriel once sat covered in dust, looking through old photo albums and snickering at childhood haircuts, while Flip himself was at work.

“Mr Zimmerman says to keep an eye on you.”

Gabriel shuts the fridge door and turns.

Margaret seems harmless enough but that’s only because Gabriel is the almost always the most dangerous person in the room. He gives her a once-over and crosses his arms, tilts his head to the side and offers her a lazy smile. “Did he now?”

Margaret stares back at him. She has intelligent eyes and those are always the most dangerous kind. “Mr. O’Malley,” she begins, in the tone of someone interrupting a teacher in the middle of class, “May I ask how you know the Detective?” 

Gabriel snorts. “The Detective?” he repeats, trying his best not to burst out laughing. “Is that what you call him? Jesus. He’s only been a detective for a year and a half. Guy’s gotta lighten up.”

Margaret smiles, just to be polite. 

“Is this an interrogation?” Gabriel asks, feigning insult. 

Margaret shrugs. “I’m just being friendly,” she says, her face so unreadable it takes Gabriel a moment to answer. 

“We used to be involved,” he says vaguely, shrugging too. “He helped me a few times when I was in a bind.” And they fucked a lot and drank a lot and Flip helped him change his tires occasionally and once, he took Gabriel to see the ocean—the fucking ocean of all things— and when Gabriel realized Flip was trying to be romantic, he laughed in his face and all the way back to the car. He still feels like an asshole for doing it, but Gabriel simply isn’t made for soft things.

Gabriel manages to steer clear of Margaret after their encounter in the kitchen, but because Flip’s house has only so much square footage, Gabriel keeps walking in on her in the middle of busywork. She’s in the living room, changing Stensland’s nappy, then in the kitchen again, testing the temperature of Stensland’s milk bottle. 

Part of Gabriel resents her for being so good with Stensland and it’s clear that Stensland has taken to her like fish to water. He hardly fusses when Margaret reads to him, a boring page out of one of her big architecture books. He’s asleep within minutes, either out of boredom or because that’s just what babies do. When he’s tucked away in his floridly pink bassinet, Margaret gets up and stretches, rotating her neck this way and letting out a big un-dainty yawn. Then she glances over her shoulder at Gabriel who’s watching her from the hallway, magazine tucked under his arm.

“Good job putting him to sleep like that,” Gabriel says, impressed, short of bursting into applause. 

Margaret shrugs, kicks back her chair and puts her sock-covered feet up on the coffee table—she’s far too comfortable in Flip’s home, this is a sign—and says, “You don’t have to be afraid of him, Mr O’Malley. I think he’d like it if you held him too.”

* * *

Gabriel heads out for a pack of smokes. Through no fault of his own he ends up at Miguel’s, who gives him the side eye and a slice of prime beef for dinner. “I thought you weren’t coming back here, you said. Thought we was too small a town for you.” 

Miguel shakes his head while Gabriel stands there feeling sheepish and awkward, waiting for Miguel to finish wrapping up the beef in butcher paper. People are friends with their hairdressers; Gabriel is friends with the town butcher. 

“Got some unfinished business, Miguel. You know how it is.”

“You still with that detective?”Miguel asks, casting a sly look Gabriel’s way.

“Jesus, does everyone know he got promoted? It’s only been a year and a half, what the fuck.” 

“Word gets around fast,” Miguel laughs. “He’s a good guy, that one.”

“That’s what everyone says,” Gabriel mutters. And it’s more than he deserves.

It’s warmer than ever, even with the promise of evening, and by the time Gabriel gets back from Miguel’s the sun has already started to set. Flip’s neighbours are coming home from work, their driveways occupied with station wagons and SUVs, the sprinklers coming to life on the lawn. Margaret is watching TV in the living room, dozing off intermittently, feet still up on the coffee table. Gabriel sends her home with an extra twenty dollars in hand, which she accepts but not only after narrowing her eyes suspiciously at him. Smart girl, that one. She’s supposed to wait till Flip gets home but a white lie never hurt anybody and it’s not like Gabriel will actively put his own child in harm’s way. It will be fine. Margaret needs to rest anyway. 

Gabriel makes beef stir fry in between sips of Bud Light and squinting at Miguel’s veiny handwriting. He’s not a good cook, not by a long shot, but he can follow instructions. He’s only ever had to cook for himself but the problem with that is: Gabriel will eat anything you put in front of him as long as it hasn’t gone totally bad. He doesn’t have a refined palate—while tailing a man for a job in Vegas all he ate for days were Eggos and Doritos— but as long as the beef doesn’t burn and the vegetables are not undercooked, he counts it as a victory.

“Where’s Margaret?” Flip announces his presence with little to no subtlety, though he has the good grace to lower his voice when he spots Stensland’s bassinet in the corner. Gabriel put it there to keep an eye on him; he’s read up on babies choking on their own vomit in their sleep, he doesn’t want to risk it.

“Sent her home. She needed to study for an exam,”

“It’s July.”

“She’s a studious girl,” Gabriel says. 

When Flip continues to look at him, Gabriel rolls his eyes and throws his hands up. “Fine, whatever. Look, I made dinner. As a peace offering. And no, I didn’t poison the food, that’d be a total waste of good steak. You know how much tenderloin cost a pound?”

“Gabriel,” Flip starts.

“Sit down, you ingrate and take your jacket off.”

“Jesus,” Flip mutters, rolling his eyes, but the thing about him is that he’s a good boy and he knows how to follow orders. It’s the military man in him. He leaves to hang his jacket in the foyer, then returns in just his undershirt, which is so thin it’s almost translucent and leaves hardly anything to the imagination.

Gabriel’s eye twitches at the sight of Flip’s muscles but he can’t think of a subtle way to tell him to keep it to a minimum so he takes big sips of his beer instead.

Flip sniffs at the beef but he plates himself a big portion and starts eating. His eyes widen in surprise a moment later. Ah, there it is: another victory; Gabriel doesn’t even bother to hide his smugness.

“What do you think?”

“Better than your bacon and eggs that’s for sure.”

“It was one time,” Gabriel reminds him, annoyed now. “And I didn’t set your kitchen on fire.”

Flip just smirks, which Gabriel interprets as a good sign, though that doesn’t mean he’s not thrown off by that response. He must tread carefully, if he wants to maintain the peace between them, but he can only walk on eggshells around Flip for so long before he snaps and says the wrong thing or goads him into a fight.

They don’t talk much throughout dinner besides Flip complimenting his cooking and Gabriel explaining how he’d prepared the food in unnecessarily excruciating detail. Gabriel offers to do the dishes, an extension of his peace offering, and when he’s standing there at the sink, elbow deep in sudsy water, his neck prickles from being watched.

He turns around and leans against the counter, now taking a real good look at Flip, whose forced casualness isn’t fooling anybody. He’s not even halfway finished with his beer ,which he’s clutching in a white knuckled grip.

“I’m not used to you being nice to me,” Flip says.

“I can be nice.” Gabriel shrugs, then adds, “Sometimes.”

“Thanks for dinner.”

“My pleasure,” Gabriel grins, dropping his voice to a sultry purr. It’s meant to tease—riling Flip up is one of his favourite past times— but Flip’s eyes darken all of a sudden and it takes Gabriel a great deal of effort not to swallow hard. He’s still a slave to his biological impulses after all; Flip is the only man who can get him wet at the drop of a hat and Gabriel may resent him for that but he’s still allowed to be impressed. 

“So this is your grand seduction?” Flip says, raising his eyebrows. “Beef and beer?”

“Is it working?” Gabriel asks. “Or do I have to flash my tits at you too?”

Flip ignores that and crosses the kitchen in two strides, setting his beer down on the sink behind Gabriel. He pushes his knee forward and Gabriel hates how his own knees inch apart in response. He’s not proud of himself at that moment, but Flip has the ability to replace any coherent thoughts with cotton and wool by just being in the same room as him.

Flip kisses him without preamble, right before Gabriel opens his mouth to speak. He tastes like beer and dinner, but it’s warm and familiar enough that Gabriel feels his chest pinch painfully in response. 

Flip kisses Gabriel tentatively like a schoolboy on a first date, soft, slow, careful. He’s never kissed Gabriel like that before. Gabriel parts his lips around a sigh and moans when Flip’s rhythm changes. Flip’s hands slide down to cup Gabriel’s waist, palming Gabriel’s arse before hoisting him onto the counter.

Gabriel can see where this is going so he makes quick work of his pants and underwear. Flip doesn’t even bother taking off his pants, just undoes his belt and takes out his cock. Gabriel hisses when Flip starts thumbing at his hole, getting him ready as if Gabriel’s body has somehow forgotten what it’s like to take the most fantastic cock of his life. He’s dripping wet by the time Flip gets to the third finger, panting hard and cross-eyed with lust. Flip spits into his hole for good measure as if Gabriel isn’t already making a mess of himself, his thighs slippery with slick.

At the first sweet slide of Flip’s tongue inside Gabriel’s arse, Gabriel throws his head back and shivers. He grabs Flip’s hair out of reflex, grinding his arse against the friction of his stupidly handsome face. Flip pulls away for only a moment, and his stubble is visibly damp with patches of slick, his lips flushed from kissing Gabe’s hole like he was some fucking pilgrim and Gabriel’s arse was a holy relic. Jesus. What an animal. But then again, so is Gabriel.

When Flip breaches him with his cock, Gabriel can’t help but let out a sigh of relief. It’s that good, sex with Flip, and he can’t believe he went months without getting fucked like this, by someone who knows how to fuck, and who knows Gabriel’s body as well as his own.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Gabriel hisses, heart pounding, cock pounding, his whole body thrumming like a live wire. “We need to be quiet. Baby’s asleep.”

“Shit. Fuck.” Flip groans, hips stuttering to a halt. They both glance to the side at Stensland’s bassinet where Stensland is still thankfully asleep. Flip turns to look at Gabriel again, then starts pounding mercilessly against Gabriel’s prostate, much to Gabriel’s delight and utter annoyance. He can’t decide which, and he can’t shut up about it either, whimpering at every thrust like he’s been wounded. Wounded by Flip’s magnificent cock. Flip manages to keep himself quiet, grunting into Gabriel’s shoulder, his teeth leaving soft indentations. 

“I thought you said be quiet?” Flip murmurs, and he has the gall to raise an eyebrow at him, the bastard.

Gabriel smacks him on the arm, hard enough to leave a smarting print and he feels a hint of pride “Fuck you Zimmerman.”

“What the fuck! That hurt!” Flip hisses. 

“Be quiet! Or you’ll wake Stensland,” Gabriel hisses back. 

“I hate you.” 

Flip doesn’t mean it, not really, and they both know it. He doesn’t slow down either, not that Gabriel would really want him to. Gabriel bites into his fist to keep his noises muffled, and he’s grateful when his orgasm comes, embarrassingly explosive, making a sticky mess of Flip’s shirt and his own stomach. Flip keeps fucking him, stirring him up with his cock, widening his stance to piston into Gabriel hard and fast till all Gabriel can hear is the rapid and somewhat obnoxious slap of their bodies. Gabriel digs his heels against Flip’s back when Flip moves to pull out, because Flip has already come inside him too many times to count in the past and there’s no point acting all coy about it now. 

Flip grunts, does his weird little coming jig, and Gabriel bites his lip as a flood of hot come rushes through him. His toes curl; there’s so much of it he can already tell it’ll start leaking out of him the second he stands on his feet. Looking back now, it was stupid to think Flip wouldn’t knock him up, with the number of times Gabriel let him get away with fucking him bareback. 

“It’s fine,” he reassures Flip before he can ask the question, “I’m on the pill.”

In the aftermath, joined together by Flip’s knot, which takes an outrageous amount of time to flag, Gabriel makes himself comfortable on the kitchen counter as much as he can, his legs splayed wide, his knees bracketing Flip’s shoulders. The tile is cold underneath him, grout cutting into the skin of his back and ass. His wrist is throbbing after he banged it a couple of times against Flip’s chest. 

Then Flip, looming above him, sweat sliding down his temple and down his cheek, finally meets his gaze to ask, “So are you gonna tell me what happened to your wrist?”

Gabriel huffs, but supposes a story is in order. They have some time to kill and he’d rather not just lie on the kitchen counter in awkward silence. “I was in Florida, and nothing good ever happens in Florida, as you know…” 

* * *

Gabriel has secrets and then he has secrets. Some of them aren’t worth taking to the grave, but he won’t be sitting in locked rooms talking to a specialist about them anytime soon either. Behind Flip’s wilting rose bush, Gabriel has buried a sackful of money. Five grand, in hundred dollar bill denominations. There are two other locations on the east coast where he keeps the rest.

Flip finds him with his knees planted in the dirt the next morning, displacing his precious rose bushes. Flip doesn’t ask, just looks at the burlap sack on the ground, then back at Gabriel before inviting him inside for coffee. Gabriel takes his sack and goes wordlessly because it’s six in the morning and he still hasn’t come up with a good excuse for digging up the money he secretly buried in Flip’s back yard.

The coffee is piping hot, enough to wake him with a jolt. Flip is unusually agreeable, offering him some sugar and cream, but keeping a close eye on him lest Gabriel steal the china. Last night he lent Gabriel a proper blanket, and though Gabriel was still relegated to the couch, he slept pretty damn comfortably, only woken intermittently by Stensland’s soft cries upstairs. He went to check up on him the first two times but stopped when he heard Flip’s footsteps on the landing. 

Flip nods at the sack placed between them on the table. Gabriel takes a fortifying sip of his coffee before meeting his gaze head on.

“I buried it there,” he explains. “As insurance. Now it’s yours.”

“I can’t take that.”

“You’re being shy now?” Gabriel raises an eyebrow.

“I’m just saying I don’t need your charity.”

“You’re taking care of my son,” Gabriel points out.

“He’s mine too,” Flip says, “He’s my son too.”

Gabriel sighs. There’s more truth to that than Flip realises. “I just want to help, Flip, in any way I can. It’s not charity. I want what’s best for the kid.”

“Then stay,” Flip tells him, “Because that money won’t matter anyway if you’re not gonna be here to watch your son grow up.”

“It’s more complicated than you think.”

“I thought you said you quit?”

“I did, but—”

“But what?” Flip cuts him off, and now Gabriel’s done it, agitated him without even trying. “We’ll deal with the consequences later. We always do.”

“Right, of course.” Gabriel laughs, because of course Flip would say that. He fucked a criminal after all, it didn’t matter to him then, and it matters even less now. It’s amazing how he hasn’t been sacked yet when Gabriel’s got a file thicker than Flip’s head. 

“We’ll deal with it later, huh,” Gabriel muses. “Just like how we’re dealing with Stensland right now, I guess?”

“Fuck,” Flip says. 

“What?”

“Fuck,” Flip repeats, this time with more feeling. “He’s mine. Fuck, he’s mine isn’t he? I knew it. I fucking knew it.”

“Well, whose would he be, Phillip? You think I just hop on every other alpha dick I come across? Of course he’s yours! What the hell kind of detective doesn’t realise he’s been taking care of his own son?”

“You can be a cagey bastard,” Flip points out, then starts rubbing at his eyes and laughing. “Fuck, I honestly thought—fuck. I had a feeling but I didn’t want to assume.”

Gabriel shrugs in answer. Now the cat’s out of the bag. . One thing less to take to the grave with him. Somehow it all feels anti-climactic, with Flip trying his best not to cry, and their coffee growing progressively colder on the table, and the sounds of suburbia unfurling around them: the paperboy cycling outside, the neighbour’s dog barking.

“You didn’t tell me. You were pregnant and had him alone and you didn’t tell me.”

Gabriel’s eyelids feel hot, and his voice is less than steady when he responds. “It was something I had to do on my own.”

Flip sighs, then he reaches over to squeeze Gabriel’s hand, a gesture that startles Gabriel into looking at him. “You’re a bigger idiot than you realise O’Malley,” he says, with more kindness in his voice than Gabriel deserves. “You want some breakfast?”

Gabriel blinks at him. “Sure.”

“Bacon and two eggs?”

Of course Flip remembers. “Bacon and two eggs,” Gabriel says.

* * *

Flip said two days but Gabriel hasn’t even made it past the city limits before he’s driving back to Flip’s neighbourhood, hating and already berating himself for being an idiot. 

What Flip is offering sounds simple enough: a place to rest his head, a home essentially, a family, but Gabriel never rests and he doesn’t trust anything that’s easy. Those usually come with the most risk, in his experience. He may try to keep his head down but sooner or later his past will come a-knocking. And then what will he do? More importantly, what will Flip do? 

The second night Gabriel spent on the couch he just lay there thinking. What if? What if he said yes? What if he would be happier? What if ten years down the line he wouldn’t recognise himself anymore when he looked at his reflection in the mirror? 

“Surprise,” Gabriel announces, grinning as he waits outside Flip’s driveway, leaning against Flip’s car in the early morning sunshine. “You really thought you’d get rid of me that easily? It’s like you don’t remember a thing, Flip.” 

Flip takes a cautious step towards him, keys in hand. “I thought you left early to get a head start.”

“I brought you a bagel and a coffee,” Gabriel says, correcting him, holding up the offending items in view. “Black, just how you like it. Bagel’s toasted with lots of cream cheese. I know how much you like licking the hole.”

Flip snorts but accepts both the coffee and the bagel. “So you’re not leaving?” he asks tentatively, moving around Gabriel to unlock the door on the driver’s side.

“I’m thinking about it,” Gabriel says. 

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Well, we can’t be twenty-two and fearless forever,” Gabriel reasons. “I’ll see you at dinner,” he says, and before Flip can say anything in response, walks up to him and presses a kiss on his cheek. Then he walks back inside the house, this time through the front door.

* * *

Routines are strange when they take shape because you’re never aware of them until they are practically calcified into your bones. Gabriel still sleeps on the sofa, but he’s used to that now and he still has some pride left so he won’t ask to sleep in Flip’s bed. That’ll give Flip an excuse to touch him in his sleep, and he’s not exactly gagging to ride his dick when he has more important matters on his mind , like getting Stensland to like him again. Stensland cries all the time: in the morning, at lunch, the second Gabriel dozes off in the middle of story time. He seems to be missing Margaret, who Flip had to let go because it was cheaper to just have Gabriel to do the child rearing. No, that’s not fair. Gabriel insisted he could do it on his own. Stensland came from him after all; he should take to his Papa like a fish to water.

But Stensland seems like an altogether different kind of fish, only quieting down when Flip comes home and takes him, squirming, from Gabriel. The baby takes comfort in Flip’s smell, maybe because it’s more familiar to him, never mind that Gabriel had been the one to bring him into this world, all five pounds and eleven ounces of him, after carrying him like a particularly bothersome stomach cramp that kept acting up for nine straight months.

Gabriel lays Stensland down on the changing table and fumbles with the snaps on his diaper. He gets his legs free and then pauses with Stensland’s foot cupped in the hollow of his right hand as he stares down at him, squirming and fussing and vigorously, furiously alive.

He’s almost a year old now. His eyes are round with vague recognition, his features moulding to look more like Gabriel’s everyday, though Gabriel doesn’t know how on earth he’s got a mole on his bottom. He’ll have to check with Faraday; he hopes it’s nothing serious.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Gabriel chastises him, freeing a fresh diaper from its brethren. “I know I’m not French-Canadian, but I’m your Papa and I love you, and you came from my body. I’ll be taking care of you from now on. You should just lie there and accept it.”

“Are you scolding the baby?”

Gabriel is too tired to even lie about it. He hasn’t heard Flip come in, but maybe that’s because Flip is finding stealthier and stealthier ways to sneak up on him unannounced. He doesn’t realise it’s bad to surprise an ex-criminal, especially when they’re prone to flinging sharp objects at you. Thankfully it hasn’t escalated to that stage yet, because Gabriel has hidden everything, except for his favourite knife, in a safe in Flip’s basement.

“You want me to take over?” Flip offers, picking Stensland up even though he’s bare-bottomed, already taking after his own Papa. “You look beat.”

Gabriel waves him off. “It’s just a diaper. I can change it myself.”

Flip glances at the waste basket, filled to the brim with Gabriel’s many attempts. “Nah, I’ll do it. I wanna spend time with him anyway. You go get some sleep.”

With weary feet, aching shoulders, and gritty eyes, Gabriel hands Flip the fresh diaper before padding downstairs to the sofa where he dives face-first into the cushions. He falls asleep as soon as his eyes close, stirring only when he dreams about someone stealing his pants. It’s Flip, he’s the pants thief, and he seems completely unrepentant about feeling Gabriel’s calves up in his sleep.

“What?” Gabriel murmurs, blinking sleepily at the blurry green shape of him, and wriggling his feet free. “Store’s closed for the night. ‘M too tired to fuck. Get off.”

Flip shakes his head, tugging harder on Gabriel’s pant leg to free it from his ankle. “I’m not about to fuck you, Jesus Christ. You’ll hate yourself in the morning if you sleep in your ‘special pants’. I’m doing you a favour.”

“What?” Gabriel blurts out stupidly. He rolls onto his back to properly look at Flip for the first time. He’s not green, and he’s wearing flannel pajamas. He looks freshly-shaved. 

“It’s ten thirty, Gabriel,” Flip sighs, folding Gabriel’s silk pants over one arm. “You overslept.” 

“Huh,” Gabriel says and sits up to rub at his eyes. He leans over his knees, trying to come to grips with himself. There’s a twinge in his back, but that’s been building up for weeks: the couch is not meant for sleeping on it long term, but at this point Gabriel will take whatever show of generosity Flip is willing to bestow him.

“Your back giving you hell again?”

Gabriel shrugs in answer. He blew his back out in an accident back when he was still serving in the military. He told Flip about it once, when he asked why Gabriel didn’t like fucking on his side. 

“You can sleep in the bed. Come on.”

Gabriel gives him a look, which Flip either pointedly ignores or doesn’t notice. He turns the light off in the living room, expecting Gabriel to follow after him without question, and Gabriel does, but only because he doesn’t trust what Flip might do to his beautiful silk pants. They have special memories attached to them. Five years later and they still fit his ass like a glove. 

Turns out Flip is not interested in setting Gabriel’s pants on fire. He just puts them on a hanger in his closet and then hunkers down on his side of the bed, bare feet on the carpet, while he methodically plucks his vitamins from a tray on the nightstand.

Gabriel lumbers over to the right side of the bed. It’s the side facing the door, which means he can always beat a hasty exit. When he kicks off his shoes and starts taking his shirt off, Flip says nothing, just drinks his glass of water quietly before placing it with a clink on an ornate coaster next to the lamp.

Then it’s time for bed.

Flip slides under the covers and pulls them up to his chest, then raises his eyebrows at Gabriel folding his shirt and smoothing out the corners. “You gonna be long? I wanna turn the lights off. I’ve got an early shift.”

Gabriel rolls his eyes and sets his shirt aside. The light flickers off almost as soon as his head hits the pillow. He forgot what Flip’s bed smelled and felt like, how easily he could fall into it and forget his own name. 

“Good night,” Flip grunts, but he doesn’t turn his back to Gabriel, and neither does Gabriel. They both stare at the ceiling for a while. Gabriel listens to the house make its requisite evening sounds, wondering how deeply Stensland is sleeping across the hall.

“I won’t be making this a habit,” Gabriel warns, before Flip gets any funny ideas. “Just because I’m in the same bed as you doesn’t mean I’m gonna let you fuck me. Tonight or any other night.”

“Why do you always make me out to be an asshole? I’m not going to touch you without your consent,” Flip huffs.

“You were thinking it,” Gabriel tells him.

“What?” Flip is silent for a moment, tense, and then he bursts out laughing. 

Something about the sound of it, and just being so near him, makes Gabriel feel warm with affection and soon he cracks up and starts smacking Flip on the arm so he’d keep it down. That’s something he does now with Flip apparently; he can laugh without wanting to punch him in the face or suspect him of snide mockery. Flip is... in many ways a complete and utter dunce, but he’s also the sort of person who was once willing to sacrifice everything for Gabriel just so they could build a life together. Who would have thought? 

Gabriel is able to mentally count to ten before he’s tossing the covers haphazardly aside and sliding over to Flip, slinging a leg over his hip and climbing his way up his lap. Flip is warm underneath him and he smells like aftershave. His hands span Gabriel’s waist and it’s utterly ridiculous the things Gabriel is willing to put up with just to feel them anywhere on his body. 

“What are you doing?” Flip asks quietly, eyes wide in the dark. “I thought you said no fucking.”

“Take your pants off before I change my mind again.”

* * *

Gabriel is ready to murder a man when the alarm goes off at four in the morning. Flip wakes too from the blaring noise of it but in incredibly slow increments, grumbling and rustling around next to Gabriel before hitting the snooze button with a fist. A minute later light floods the room as Flip flicks the bedside lamp on without so much as a warning. 

Gabriel groans and buries his head under the pillow. He barely got any sleep last night; he barely gets any sleep these days, but neither does Flip. It turns out keeping an infant alive means sacrifice. It seems easier in theory, because people always make it seem like a Hallmark greeting card, but the whole experience is not unlike pulling teeth. And Gabriel should know, he once had to torture a man by taking a couple of teeth out with some pliers. 

“Gonna shower and make some coffee,” Flip says, starting to lumber about the room. He makes as much noise as an elephant on roller skates, although much less subtle. Gabriel grunts in response and manages to doze off, coming to some indeterminate hour later and with Flip shaking his shoulder. 

“Hey,” he says gently. “We gotta get moving.”

Gabriel flings his pillow aside and gives Flip a look to remind him of his sordid, criminal past. Flip, from his years on the police force, doesn’t seem too perturbed by it but that’s probably also due in part to Gabriel never making good on his promise to do him physical harm. It’s all empty threats; Gabriel knows he’d die before he ever put a knife to Flip’s throat.

Flip cups the back of his neck, rubbing at the aching muscle, throbbing from when Gabriel had read Stensland a story scrunched up uncomfortably in a tiny reading chair. 

“You can sleep in the car,” Flip murmurs. “Come on, up, up.”

Gabriel uncurls himself from the blankets with a long groan. He takes a sip of Flip’s coffee when it’s offered.Of course it’s shite: sweet, creamy and not the black unadulterated brew he prefers. Gabriel makes a face, sheer disgust jarring him into wakefulness.

“We leave in half an hour,” Flip informs him, hand rubbing up Gabriel’s elbow. Gabriel allows that now: the constant touching, though it embarrasses him when Flip does it in public, in full view of onlookers: a hand on the hip, or the shoulder. Once he even kissed Gabriel on the cheek in front of the fucking mailman. Flip likes to act like they’re courting, or worse yet: as if they’re married, which Gabriel tries not to think about because it gives him a migraine. 

Gabriel wonders when this has become his life. He used to hide his money in secret drawers and have at least two kinds of firearms on him at any given time. His life used to be all about subterfuge and aliases, about following people into dark alleyways and holding them at gunpoint. Now he makes packed lunches in the morning, for Flip to take to work, and peels stickers off the tables and chairs Stensland likes to deface. 

Today they’re going to the beach. Flip had planned the whole thing, taken the day off, begged the chief practically, and seemed more giddy than Stensland who has never seen the sea except in The Little Mermaid. Their first family outing. Family: ha! Another word Gabriel prefers not to think about. He’s getting used to consciously tamping down on the impulse to make a run for it. One breath, and then another. This is his life now. He can do this.

Flip straps Stensland into the carseat with his favourite blanket and a stuffed rabbit for company. “Ready?” he grins, glancing over at Stensland who giggles and claps his hands together in the backseat. Flip has dressed him like a strawberry, strawberry printed overalls and a matching red had. “Ready dadda!” Stensland affirms, grin missing a few teeth. 

Flip turns to Gabriel still shifting around to a more comfortable position in the passenger seat. “Is Papa ready?” he asks.

Gabriel rolls his eyes but dutifully clips his seat belt on. He hates driving in Flip’s car: once a slick piece of machinery, now repurposed as the ‘family car’, the backseat cluttered with baby stuff. He can’t believe he used to think Flip was cool. 

Flip turns the radio on and then they’re off, driving evenly and carefully to obey the speed limit because they have a child in tow.

There’s one good thing Gabriel will acknowledge about setting out early: the roads are empty at this hour, a long smooth stretch running just ahead of them, and with the sun not yet up everything washes out to smooth, milky shadows. Flip takes the backroads and then it’s just them and the trees, them and the headlights cutting through the blue-black dawn, and the music on the radio too soft to make out. Gabriel is used to long drives, but he’s never driven without a purpose before. He drove to escape: on the run from authorities or his enemies or else he was running from himself. He never really stopped to appreciate the scenery. There was never time for that. 

Gabriel dozes off listening to Stensland babble excitedly about mermaids and how he plans to befriend one at the beach. He jolts awake when the car pulls to a sudden stop. They’re here; they’ve arrived. Flip is already getting all their gear out of the trunk: towels, the cooler, the half dozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches Gabriel made before they left the house, half with the crusts cut off because that’s how both Flip and Stensland like theirs. 

“Did you bring the sunblock?” Gabriel asks, popping the crick in his neck before ducking into the backseat to unstrap Stensland from the baby seat.

“Of course I did, I’m not an amateur,” Flip huffs, and he’s not kidding either, because later Gabriel will find the two kinds of sunblock in the bag: one for kids and one for adults. 

After hunkering down on a spot that’s within view of the water, Gabriel helps Stensland into his swimming outfit. Strawberry themed, of course, because ever since he watched that weird German cartoon with the man looking for someone to give him strawberries for his sandwich, he’s been obsessed. 

“Swim! Swim! Swim!” Stensland chants excitedly, when Gabriel is rubbing sunblock all over his pale arms and legs. If he’s anything like him—and the resemblance is laughably uncanny, Stensland is his spitting image— he’ll burn up without protection so Gabriel must be thorough.

“Hold still, darling, I’m almost done!”

“Papa,” Stensland whines. “I’ll be late!”

Gabriel just snorts. “Your mermaid friend isn’t going anywhere. She’ll be in the water all day, don’t worry about it,” he assures him, then releases Stensland after slathering lotion all over his chubby little face, the same face that makes his heart ache when he thinks about the possibility of never seeing it again. “There you are! Now you’re ready!”

Flip nudges him in the side. “Want me to put sunblock on you?”

Gabriel looks at him, bemused. “You’re just just looking for excuses to feel me up, aren’t you Phillip Zimmerman?”

Flip shrugs, looking sheepish, but he doesn’t deny the accusation. Gabriel lets him rub sunblock on his shoulders. For practicality’s sake if nothing else, because there are admittedly some hard to reach areas, and he has very limited reach. And Flip has great hands: big, warm, the hands of a good man, a good father. He sweeps them down Gabriel’s back, then up again, squeezing the base of Gabriel’s neck before giving it a firm kiss.

Gabriel shivers, forgetting to duck out of the way. Flip can be very sneaky when he tries to be.

“There’s drinks in the cooler, but I didn’t bring any beer.” Flip gets up from his knees. “Bought a Red bull though.” 

He smiles at Gabriel, holding the expression long enough to become awkward, then takes Stensland’s hand and lingers at the edge of the towel where Gabriel is sitting cross-legged and flicking sand off his toes. “You wanna swim or—”

“Later. I’ll hold the fort.”

Flip nods. He looks like he wants to say something, but of course he doesn’t. Gabriel makes a dismissive motion with his hand. “Go! Have fun! It’s your day off, Flip. Catch some mermaids!”

“Befriend them, Papa!” Stensland corrects him.

Gabriel laughs. He bought a book with him, old and yellowed at the edges, never returned to the library. It’s in terrible condition, but it’s perfect for the beach when you want to turn your brain off. Gabriel reads and eats strawberries and glances up every now and then to watch Flip and Stensland play by the waves: laughing, flinging water and sand at each other, shrieking like lunatics.

He doesn’t know how much time passes. An hour, maybe two, because he gets through a fair portion of his book and moves onto a bowl of peanuts. He spies a swimming figure heading towards his direction and squints. Flip rises out of the water like Gabriel’s own personal fantasy, a slick, godly vision that flops down on the towel beside Gabriel and grins at him. 

“Hey,” he says. Gabriel sticks his finger in his book, then removes his finger and tosses the book aside because who cares? “You got any of those sandwiches left?”

“Do I?” Gabriel leers, but then Stensland comes barreling in a second later, kicking sand everywhere, chanting: sandwiches sandwiches! He looks flushed and crazed. Gabriel regretfully recognises that look because he’s seen it on himself.

He dries Stensland off despite his protests and then hands him a juice box to keep him busy. Flip scarfs down his sandwich in two big swallows, then has the audacity to ask for another one. Stensland eats his sandwich with equal less finesse, getting jam all over his cheeks and the tip of his nose. The rest of the day unfolds in more or less the same fashion: Flip and Stensland play together, building sandcastles and foraging for seashells, then head back to Gabriel when they get hungry. 

At some point Flip manages to coax Gabriel into the water. The sun is about to set, streaking pink light across the horizon.

Gabriel reapplies sunblock then tosses his shirt at Flip who catches it in surprised reflex. Then he picks Stensland up from the beach and wades into the water until he’s standing waist deep in it, shivering, nipples puckering up, Stensland kicking his little feet out like he’s seen in cartoons, holding tightly onto Gabriel’s shoulders. Flip crowds in behind him; Gabriel bumps into him. Jesus.

“We’ll be fine,” Gabriel assures him. “Won’t we, Stensy?”

“The waves can get really high,” Flip says reasonably. “Can’t be too careful.”

Gabriel looks at Flip and his infuriatingly patient smile. Gabriel lets him have this, because he’s feeling strangely charitable—must be sun poisoning— and it takes so much effort to argue these days. Better give Flip what he wants and be done with it: peace, the blankets, his pick of toothbrush colour. He needs so little but gives so much.

Flip swims circles around them, splashing water at Stensland who wrinkles his nose and giggles, splashing back, waving his arms. He’s tuckered out when they bundle him up in towels and begin the long walk back to the car, dozing off on Gabriel’s shoulder, all warm and scratchy with sand everywhere, including the back of the ears. He’s precious. Gabriel can’t remember ever loving somebody this much. 

“It’s everywhere, goddamnit. I swear to god I saw him eat some of it.” 

Gabriel brushes grit off Stensland’s hair, which gets redder and curlier each day. He used to have nightmares about Stensland’s hair falling out, or waking up to discover it had somehow gone black. He prefers Stensland to look like him: a reminder that he made this one perfect being, who is unmarred by all his misdeeds, a miracle, though Gabriel has long since stopped believing in a higher power, despite the cross he wears around his neck.

“He’s a kid,” Flip says, reaching over to ruffle Stensland’s hair. “He’ll eat anything, Gabe.”

“I suppose,” Gabriel agrees, pressing a kiss to Stensland’s downy little head. “I once saw him eat a penny.”

* * *

Two things happen when Stensland turns four. First, the Logans move in next door, changing their lives entirely. Second, Stensland almost swallows an engagement ring. 

Clyde Logan is all Stensland can talk about all summer. The family moved from West Virginia and they’re charming salt of the earth types with the most polite boys you’ve ever seen. Jimmy Logan, at eight years old, is bold and brash and charming. But it’s Clyde Logan Stensland takes a shine to, because they’re closer to each other’s ages and like the same cartoons. Clyde with the awful bowl cut and funny ears who ducks his head shyly and calls Gabriel and Flip “sir”. 

Stensland is always asking if Clyde can come over and play, and it worries Flip that Stensland has gotten so easily attached after only a few short hours together at the bouncy castle. The Logans threw a Sunday barbecue a week after they moved in. 

Everyone in the neighbourhood had been invited, even the reverend who lived down the block and who mostly clucked his tongue at people dressed in denim shorts. It was Gabriel, really. He was the only one in shorts, but that was because they were having one of the hottest summers in recent years, and he knew he had terrific legs; it would be a shame to hide them. Flip couldn’t resist them, and he had the self-control of a saint. It was not Gabriel’s fault god made him this way: beautiful, deadly, with an arse that tasted like cream if Flip’s lust for it was anything to go by.

At the barbecue, the kids were left to their own devices; a dozen of them running amok in the Logan’s spacious backyard, chasing each other, playing hide and seek, some of them, like Stensland and Clyde, jumping around in the inflatable bouncy castle until they made themselves sick. The adults drank beer by the pool and bragged about their decks. Gabriel joked about Flip having the biggest deck but Flip had not been impressed. 

“Not sure I like that kid,” Flip mutters, while they’re watching Stensland race Clyde down the street to his house, Clyde’s big brother Jimmy keeping a close eye on them. 

“He’s four years old,” Gabriel reminds Flip, elbowing him in the side. “He’s about to start school. He needs friends.”

“I’m his friend.”

“You’re his dad, Flip. He needs to be around kids his age. Although,” Gabriel taps the corner of his cheek, pretending to think. “I’d say you’re close in age mentally.”

Flip doesn’t laugh because he is a miserable man with no sense of humour. Instead he sighs and shakes his head, giving Stensland one last look before he disappears through the Logan’s front door. 

“I’ll be in the garage,” he announces wearily, which is usually Gabriel’s cue to follow him, because if Stensland gets play time then so should Gabriel. 

Another new facet of Gabriel’s life is the fact that he’ll take it wherever and whenever he can: the basement, bent over the washing machine on a lazy Saturday afternoon, against the closet door freshly damp from a shower, Stensland still asleep in his bedroom across the hall. They’re quick, sloppy fucks, dirty and desperate, reminding Gabriel of when he and Flip used to hole up together in motel rooms and go at it like dogs. He smells like Flip most days, when his clothes don’t smell like baby powder and formula. Sometimes he’ll be making dinner, his ass still sore from fucking, and he’ll smell it on himself: Flip. 

Minutes pass. Gabriel looks at the ceiling, at the floor, at Flip who’s plastered awkwardly to his lower half, his throbbing knot joining them together like a corkscrew. Gabriel is splayed across Flip’s workbench, lying on top of old magazines and notebooks filled with half-finished sketches of renovation plans. He pulls away a protractor plastered onto his back and tosses it aside with a grunt.

“Why does it always take you so long to get soft?” Gabriel wonders aloud, folding his arms behind his head. He flexes his upper torso, pushing out his chest, relishing the resultant twinge of pain-pleasure when Flip’s knot rubs at his prostate.

“You’re a real champion of pillow talk, did you know that?” Flip says, but his voice is quiet, as it always is in the aftermath of these sorts of activities. 

“Well, what do you want me to say?” 

“I don’t know.” Flip makes a thoughtful noise. “Something nice, maybe.”

“Something nice,” Gabriel repeats dubiously, then starts laughing when Flip throws him a wounded expression. “Well, all right. Let me think.” 

He hums, closes his eyes, and almost falls asleep until Flip nudges him with a roll of the hips. 

“Taking you an awful long time.”

“Shut up—it’s only been a minute.” Gabriel blinks one eye open and then the other to find Flip watching him with the kind of glazed-eyed tenderness that makes Gabriel’s throat close up. He’s handsome, even and especially with a stubbled jaw . Sometimes Gabriel forgets that Flip is more than a sturdy body; that he has his good looks too.

“You should get a haircut,” Gabriel suggests. 

“That’s your something nice?” 

Flip lifts an eyebrow in disbelief, but he lets Gabriel touch his hair and doesn’t move out of the way when Gabriel pushes a lock behind one ear. Gabriel remembers meeting him for the first time, at that dingy little bar at the edge of town playing pool with the town hicks. The song on the jukebox that night was Dolly Parton’s My Tennessee Mountain Home. Flip had been wearing that stupid blue hat. He bought Gabriel a drink, asked him if he was from around these parts. Gabriel said he was just passing through, but that he was also looking for a good reason to stay. 

Well, it’s been four years and he’s had plenty of opportunities but he’s still here, still anchored and unmoving like a stone. Gabriel hasn’t touched his gun since he hid it in a safe only he knew the code to, deep in the bowels of Flip’s basement. This is the life he has chosen for himself and sometimes when he’s lying in his bed at night, listening to Flip sleep, he thinks about how different things could have been. If he didn’t have Stensland. If he had chosen not to stay. If Flip hadn’t bought him that first drink, that night at the bar at the edge of town. 

They lapse into sudden silence, but it’s silence that doesn’t wrap around Gabriel’s throat like a noose. It’s silence like he’s never known it before, comfortable, needing nothing. He wonders if Flip has this heady feeling, too—it clouds Gabriel’s mind and makes it hard for him to think about anything else except for Flip, living, breathing, a solid weight above him.

* * *

Gabriel doesn’t mean to but he finds the ring in the pocket of Flip’s favourite jacket while he’s looking for spare change. The ring is unfussy and simple, a gold band that’s the exact measurement of Gabriel’s ring finger. It probably cost at least three of Flip’s pay checks and though Gabriel has seen jewellery that’s shinier and more expensive, he’s still a bit impressed. First because Flip apparently knows his ring size, and second because Flip has been able to keep the ring a secret from him. How long has he had the ring in his pocket? More importantly: was he planning to pop the question over dinner? Or maybe while they were fucking, when Gabriel is more malleable and more likely to say yes?

It’s stupid though is the thing. Why would Flip buy him a ring? They haven’t even mated yet; Gabriel has put his foot down on being marked for life. He doesn’t understand marriage because his parents were married for a number of years and they resented each other for a good portion of their marriage. Gabriel doesn’t resent Flip and he can stand him five out of seven days a week, yes, but the same can be said about _The Golden Girls_.

Flip makes him laugh: when he’s being stupid, when he’s cracking corny jokes, when he’s being obtuse about little things like making sure Gabriel knows the password to his ATM in case of an emergency and the key ingredient to his bubbe’s famous Mandelbrodt (it’s cinnamon, and lots of it). 

A ring complicates everything. Trust Flip to complicate everything. 

Gabriel pretends not to have seen it, but just like everything else in his life that he tried to sweep under the rug or dump in the cold dark waters of the Hudson, it comes back to haunt him and not in a good way. 

One day at breakfast time, Stensland spits out the ring after hacking and gagging for a good solid minute.

“What?” Gabriel says. 

Stensland has swallowed pennies before, even bugs, because the kid just likes to put everything in his mouth but even Gabriel isn’t expecting him to spit out a whole ring, covered in regurgitated cereal. 

“Where did you get this Stensland?” Gabriel asks slowly, after he’s petted Stensland’s hair and calmed him down with some apple juice. 

“Daddy’s jacket!” Stensland answers brightly. “I found a bubble gum wrapper too!”

The kid takes after Gabriel: he has quick reflexes and can’t resist a hefty pocket. Gabriel laughs awkwardly and pockets the ring but Stensland keeps taking it without him noticing and leaving it everywhere around the house: on the sink, in his toy trunk. He uses it as a makeshift crown for one of his dolls and also manages to wrap a sparkly sticker around it. 

Gabriel finally has enough when the ring rolls out of Stensland’s shorts when he’s sorting out the laundry. He doesn’t ask. Stensland sometimes uses his underwear as an extra pocket because he likes to pick stuff up from the ground and children’s pockets can only carry so much. 

Gabriel disinfects the ring with some warm water and soap, then some vinegar and cold water. Thankfully the colour doesn’t fade—good job on Flip for knowing how to pick the quality stuff. Maybe if he still has the receipt they can return it to the store and use the money to go on vacation again. Stensland has been asking about Disneyland, and airfare and hotels cost a fortune. Gabriel technically still has funds squirrelled away for emergencies but he’d have to travel to El Paso for them and trespass onto private property. He’d rather save the felony for a rainy day.

Gabriel wears the ring along with the cross around his neck. He doesn’t think about it again. He doesn’t have to. Until two nights later when he is flossing before bed and Flip wanders into the bathroom asking if Gabriel has seen his bottle of melatonin. 

Flip stops halfway through the door, and their eyes lock briefly in the mirror above the sink. He doesn’t say anything. Neither does Gabriel, though he becomes hyper aware of Flip staring at his neck. He resists the urge to touch the ring where it sits at his throat, the sparkle of Stensland’s unicorn sticker already fading. 

“Are we going to talk about it?” Gabriel asks, later in bed with the lights off and the sheets pulled up to their chests. 

Flip hesitates. Gabriel can hear the gears of his brain turning. Flip takes a deep breath, and he expels it, long and shaky. “Is there anything to talk about?” 

Gabriel doesn’t know. He wants to laugh, break the tension with a crude joke. He’s not the best at sentiment, but this thing between them isn’t only that anymore, but a real feeling. Four years is quite a long time to be pussyfooting around but Gabriel has perfected deflection to a near artform. It’s probably why he’s passed every lie detector test known to man with flying colours. He can lie and keep a straight face. 

“We should go to Florida,” Gabriel says, when Flip doesn’t speak for a long time. “I heard it’s great this time of year.”

“What? Why Florida?” Flip asks. 

“You’re right. Florida is shite. Nothing good ever happens there.”

But Flip doesn’t rise to the bait—not this time. Maybe he’s tired, or being sullen. Gabriel has learned to ride his moods like a sailor navigating uncharted territory; there are hidden depths to his silences. 

“You found it, I guess,” Flip says in such a low whisper Gabriel almost doesn’t hear him. “I thought I’d lost the ring. I was getting real nervous.”

“You’re an idiot,” Gabriel tells him. He can’t keep the fondness from his voice. Emotions are a funny, novel thing. Gabriel used to vacillate between extreme rage and horniness before he met Flip, and now Flip has turned him into an actual human who lives and dies according to his mercy. If Flip said jump, Gabriel would ask how high. If Flip asked him to marry him, well. Gabriel would have a different answer each day but more importantly he’d stay put; he wouldn’t run away.

“I thought it’d be neat,” Flip says, “I could put you on my tax return.”

“Ever the pragmatist.”

“Gabe,” Flip says, cutting him off, and Gabriel remembers the other times Flip has said his name exactly like that. He swallows hard, and, for the first time in his life, stops himself from saying anything at all. 

He remembers: that time at the motel with windows dampened by dew; when they drove to the beach where Flip asked him about the first time he had killed a man. Last night, when Flip sprung up on him while he was making dinner and kissed his neck and Gabriel almost stabbed him with a fork out of reflex. Flip still has bruises on his ribs. 

“I’ll think about it,” Gabriel says, and makes a grab for Flip’s hand before he loses the nerve. He squeezes it in pulses: once, twice. Three times for good luck, a silly old superstition, though he’s never put much stock in such superfluous things. But it can’t hurt to be sure. This is something to fight for, not against. 

“I don’t believe in marriage, but there’s a lot that I don’t believe in and maybe you can change my mind,” Gabriel says. He pauses, but then finally finds his voice again: even, unafraid, unabashedly tender. “You think you can do that?”

Gabriel can tell even in the dark that Flip is looking at him; it’s a feeling he knows. “Sure,” Flip says, hitching out a soft laugh. “I can at least try.”

* * *

This is what Gabriel likes about getting old: having the house all to himself and waking up to the sound of the lawnmower running, the blinds pulled closed and the light in the room thick with motes of dust. It’s a small house at the end of the street and he can feel every inch of it intimately, now that the rooms are empty and Stensland has moved out. He can stay in bed however long he wants. Breakfast can wait because there is no child to feed. Every day is beautiful. He can indulge in his favourite pastime of watching Flip try to DIY things he could buy for cheap at the hardware store.

This is what he hates about getting old: the constant aches and pain, the trips to the clinic like a monthly ritual. The fear that grips him when Flip coughs in his sleep. Hair growing in places it shouldn’t be growing. The tinctures and ointments Faraday keeps on prescribing for their various ailments. Taxes. He has to watch what he eats now and so does Flip. No red meat on weekdays if they can help it. On Sundays they go on hour-long jogs at the park because they need the exercise. Neither of them smokes, they quit the habit long ago before Stensland even started walking. 

When Stensland announces his wedding in June, they make the pilgrimage to Boone County, where Clyde puts them up in the best Bed and Breakfast in town. Flip packs his best suit; it hangs in the closet along with the clothes he brought for the weekend: a printed shirt for the barbecue, a more formal one for the official photos Flip plans to place on the mantel at home. Gabriel is wearing the same suit he wore to Stensland’s high school graduation, because it’s expensive and still fits him and makes his arse look great.

“I can’t believe he’s getting married,” Flip says, sounding both heartbroken and angry, drinking whiskey on the balcony like a complete and utter cliché. 

Gabriel rolls his eyes and takes the glass from him. Faraday had said to keep the drinking to a minimum after all. “He’s twenty-seven. It was going to happen sooner or later.”

“I was hoping later,” Flip huffs.

“It’s just how it is,” Gabriel says, shrugging, taking a sip of Flip’s whiskey before keeping it out of arm’s reach.

Flip offers him a sad smile. There are lines in his face, deeper than the ones that have been there yesterday and the day before that. Gabriel dreams of erasing them with his touch, but he knows that he has them too: a wrinkle between his brows and the sides of his mouth from frowning and laughing at Flip in turns.

“Gabe,” Flip says.

“Yeah?”

“Can’t believe Stensland is getting married before we are.”

Gabriel crosses his arms. It’s a defensive gesture and when Flip turns to face him fully, Flip mirrors his stance. “You’re still pissed about that? It’s been twenty-three years!”

“And you still haven’t given me an answer!” Flip scoffs

“I can’t believe this! You’re so fucking ridiculous!”

“Fuck it if I am.” Flip’s voice is wounded. “Do I have to kneel? My knees are fucked, but I would if I could,” he says viciously.

“Jesus, Flip,” Gabriel says, then laughs because he can’t help it. “No, don’t kneel. You don’t have to. Get up.” He grips Flip by the elbows, tugging him close, chest to chest. “I’ve been wearing your ring for twenty-three years. You think I’d still walk out on you? Have a little faith, Phillip. Do I need to spell it out?”

Flip is a bastard so of course he waits for Gabriel to say it. 

“I hate being sappy,” Gabriel confesses. “You know that about me. And I hate weddings. The only reason I’m here is because Stensland is getting married and I wanna see him off. Before, you know.” He makes a vague gesture with his hand and sighs. “My answer still hasn’t changed. If you had asked me then—really asked me—I would have said the same thing. I would have said yes. But I also would have been too chickenshit to say it out loud. I’m fifty three Flip—”

“—Fifty five,” Flip interrupts him, but Gabriel barrels on, ignoring him. “Do you still want to marry me? I can’t fit into my shorts, I’ve got a weird bump under my armpit, my tits have sagged and I blame you, there’s really no point.”

“You sound like a catch,” Flip tells him. A beat passes; they both burst out laughing. The look Flip gives him is uncertain but he doesn’t stop looking at Gabriel and that’s what matters. 

Flip leans in to kiss him; Gabriel meets him halfway effortlessly, from years born of practice. 

“You also snore in your sleep,” Flip points out.

“So do you,” Gabriel whips back at him. “I’m thinking of getting you one of those sleep apnea machines.”

“Gabriel,” Flip says.

“What?”

“Marry me.” Flip slides his palm over to where the ring sits perfectly at the base of Gabriel’s throat, where it has stayed unmoving for the last twenty-three years. “Say yes.” 

This time Gabriel doesn’t falter. He did before, the first time Flip asked him, but he knows better now because he’s not the man he used to be. He’s only got one life left to live and it’s this one, the one he has with Flip, the one they built together in that little house at the end of the street, where the kitchen always smells like Mandelbrodt on Rosh Hashanah because it is the only thing Gabriel knows how to bake that he doesn’t set on fire.

“Yes,” Gabriel says, and he’s never been more sure of anything in his life. He doubts he ever will be about anything ever again. 

* * *

Stensland’s wedding is a disaster but it’s a beautiful disaster, one for the ages. It rains midway into the ceremony when Clyde is saying his vows and pledging his undying love to Stensland. Clyde is the first to notice, squinting up at the sky when it starts weeping a deluge. 

Gabriel had advised Stensland against an outdoor wedding but Stensland had been adamant to feel the grass under his feet and cut overall costs by using the Logan Family Farm as a venue. As a result there were farm animals roaming freely and chewing on the floral arrangements. A guy with a tongue piercing presided over the ceremony but everyone looked beautiful and happy to be there, especially Stensland who cried the entire time Flip and Gabriel walked him down the aisle. Gabriel might have teared up a little too and he rarely got emotional unless he was eating a great piece of steak or Flip remembered his birthday. 

The wedding goes the way most weddings go, which is to say it is long, a bit boring, babies fuss and start wailing, people sigh at Clyde’s heartfelt speech, and then the skies open up and rain comes down hard, wind picking up and whipping the table linens like sails. 

Gabriel clucks his tongue when everyone starts to make a run for it, arms above their heads to shield themselves from the torrential onslaught. 

“It’s a sign!” Flip says above the pelt of rain and the distant rumble of thunder. “An omen.”

Gabriel just laughs at him. “I think it’s meant to be good luck.”

They wait out the rain in the Logan family barn, along with the other guests, damp but otherwise amused and having a good time. Gabriel spies Clyde and Stensland huddled together in a corner, holding hands like they used to when they were younger and hiding their relationship from everybody. Clyde rubs Stensland’s back with his good hand, murmuring something to him that makes Stensland instantly perk up and smile. Briefly, Gabriel wonders what his own face looks like when Flip touches him like that—absent touches, little strokes over his brow, his cheeks. He turns to look at Flip who’s frowning at the rain outside. Flip blinks in surprise when Gabriel takes his hand.

Flip is right, though, as it turns out, about the rain being an omen because Gabriel gets food poisoning after eating shrimp at the reception and then spends the next three days throwing up his lunch. It gets particular worse in the second week; Gabriel can’t seem to hold anything down. They cancel their cruise to the Bahamas and Flip drives him to Faraday’s clinic for a checkup instead of the airport, the two of them already dressed for the holiday in beach shorts and matching straw hats. 

“Sorry we missed the cruise because of me,” Gabriel says when Flip returns to the waiting room with a cup of water from the cooler. 

“We can go again next time,” Flip assures him, stroking his back. 

“No,” Gabriel says. “We’re broke.”

They’d paid for the wedding after all and footed part of the bill for Stensland and Clyde’s honeymoon. There’s some money put away, but it’s money enough to tide them over in case of an emergency, not to pay for a two-week couples cruise across the Atlantic. But if Gabriel suddenly remembers the location of his money, well, that solves most of their problems though he’d be hard pressed to return to a place of the past. He kept his eyes ahead for the longest time, all forward movement. In the book of Genesis, while fleeing a burning city, Lot’s wife made the mistake of looking over her shoulder. It’s time to put the past to sleep. Gabriel won’t bury it, because that would mean burying a part of himself. This life he lives now is a result of all his choices: the good, the bad, the questionable. Every step bringing him closer and closer to this moment now, twenty-three years later with a stomach full of bad food and a droopy straw hat.

“We’ll find a way,” Flip assures him, sounding so certain about himself that Gabriel actually believes him this time. “We always do, don’t we?”

“I can always rob a bank,” Gabriel suggests. “You can be my lookout. I think I’ve still got it.”

Flip actually laughs. Gabriel smiles and even with their shoulders pressed together in a cramped waiting room his chest feels so light it’s almost like he’s soaring. And then he is hit with the sudden realisation that this is it: they’ve arrived. 

Faraday emerges half an hour later looking flustered, a clipboard tucked under one arm. “Looks like congratulations are in order,” he says, utterly bemused as he nods at both of them . “You’re having twins!” 

_And you said  
"This is the first day of my life  
I'm glad I didn't die before I met you  
But now I don't care, I could go anywhere with you  
And I'd probably be happy" _

_-_ Bright Eyes, "[First Day of My Life](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztGPYPArAyE)"


End file.
